Columns

I love summer. Summer is glorious in Florida.
It's hot, humid, sticky. Beer pool season.
It's also budget time.
I don't know who in their evil mind set government's fiscal year to begin on Oct. 1, but they ruin summer for everyone with it. There must be a special place in hell reserved for the person who came up with this idea.
The timetable has government body is struggling with balancing revenues and expenses into a budget during the hottest, most uncomfortable part of the year.

I asked a Sheriff's Office spokesperson about air conditioner burglaries in the county and I also noted my street alone had an AC stolen that was almost turned into a home burglary. And the same road also had a home invasion that resulted in the suspect's death and an armed robbery.

Like a mantra he said crime was down and pointed to 2007 figures showing crime went down in Levy County.

Being a Mets fan, it's awfully hard to make friends with a Phillies fan. After all, that's the team that knocked the Mets out of the playoffs last year, and they're about to do it again.

However, there was one man in Levy County that I could call and joke with about baseball, and sports in general. As late as a week ago Tuesday, we were on the phone to each other talking about the pennant race, among other things in local sports. He was my favorite Phillies fan.

His name was Claude Lewis, and he was a writer and sports editor for our sister paper, the Chiefland Citizen.

No one is prepared when the doctor walks into the room and explains that you or a loved one has an illness that cannot be cured. Both family and patient often receive this news at a time when they are already at wit's end - emotionally, spiritually and physically. But what if the illness is there yet the conversation about end-of-life options never happens?

For two days I have mourned the loss of my neighbors-not the sitcom stars of 50 years ago but an entire convocation of spiders, presumably banana spiders, that have resided at my back door all summer and most recently decided to expand their lodging to the front door.

For the last three summers, I have watched their homes develop over days, weeks and months- lacework webs that bear intricate patterns and designs.

I have a friend who keeps her watches and clocks set an hour ahead at all times. By doing so, this perpetually late creature of habit has convinced herself that she is always tardy, and when she does show up for appointments, she's on time or early.

Now of course, somewhere deep within her psyche she knows that her clocks and watches are wrong and that could give her incentive to dally more and being really, really late.

But she's used her imagination enough over the years that the con works, thereby saving her from embarrassment and reprimand from family and employer alike.

As I have interviewed interns and reporter candidates over the last few weeks, one resounding theme kept coming up when I tell them what I think is the best part of working for a small town paper: the interesting people you meet.

Of course there are the obligatory meetings that must be covered, the birth announcements and wedding news that need to be shared, but by far, the best thing for any reporter is getting out and meeting people who have done things that you only dream or have been places you've only read about.